Get your character education act together!
Elements of an effective character education program and lots of ideas for implementation—all across the curriculum.
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Related pages
- Creating community in the classroom: Part 3 (monitoring progress): This series of lessons is designed to help develop a sense of classroom community through use of group goal-setting, decision-making, brainstorming, peer feedback, positive reinforcement, and positive peer pressure. The lessons will help students create and maintain a supportive environment for learning. Part 1 focused on goal-setting process and practice. In Part 2, students applied knowledge of the goal-setting process and cooperatively created a plan to work on short-term group goals. In part 3, students will monitor the effects of their plan by determining whether short term goals are being achieved.
- Creating community in the classroom: Part 4 (rewarding improvement): The fourth lesson in a series on improving classroom learning climate, this lesson provides an opportunity to evaluate student progress and to provide positive reinforcement for improvements in behavior. Using a one to ten continuum, students will subjectively evaluate class progress on the ten adjectives listed as class climate goals. After this process, students will publicly recognize those classmates who have helped the class improve or who have personally improved.
- Creating community in the classroom: Part 1 (setting goals ): This series of lessons is designed to help develop a sense of classroom community. Group goal-setting, brainstorming, peer feedback, group decision-making, positive reinforcement, and positive peer pressure are used to create a safe, supportive environment for learning in the classroom.
In Part 1, students are introduced to the goal-setting process. They will practice the first step of the process as they set individual and class behavioral goals.
Related topics
- Learn more about character education, core values, guidance, intrinsic motivation, and life skills.
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Background
In 2001, North Carolina legislature passed a law (the Student Citizenship Act of 2001) that required all local education agencies (LEAs) to develop and implement character education instruction, and it was to be incorporated into the standard curriculum. The concept was one that had been dealt with before—but the name had changed. Over the years, character education has been called by many names, one of which was civic education.
The social studies goal of civic education was to produce informed, responsible, participating citizens who were committed to the basic values and principles of our constitutional democracy. Students were to develop character traits that lead to responsible behavior in both public and private arenas. Traits such as responsibility, self-discipline, civility, respect, open-mindedness, compassion, and patriotism were developed in effective civic education programs.
The Student Citizenship Act of 2001 listed twelve traits: courage, good judgment, integrity, kindness, perseverance, respect, responsibility, self-discipline, respect for school personnel, responsibility for school safety, service to others, and good citizenship. As you can see, most of the traits in what was once called civic education have been incorporated—with a bit of tweaking—into character education. In some respects, new mandates have come from old programs. For example, Responsibility for School Safety has grown into the Critical Intervention Response program from Attorney General Roy Cooper’s office—training for school staff in the event of a safety situation. Service to Others has now become part of North Carolina’s high school graduation requirements.
The Eleven Principles
According to the Character Education Partnership, there are eleven principles of character education.1 The Eleven Principles serve as criteria that schools and groups can use to plan character education programs and to evaluate available programs and materials:
Character education promotes core ethical values as the basis of good character. Character education’s fundamental principle is that there are ethical values that form the basis of good character. A school (and/or system) that is committed to a character education program explicitly names and publicly upholds these values. In a school dedicated to developing character, the core values are treated as a matter of obligation; they assert that the values are valid, and it is everyone’s responsibility to uphold them.
“Character” must be comprehensively defined to include thinking, feeling, and behavior. In an effective character education program, students, as well as all other members of the educational community, know and appreciate the key values. As students grow in character, they will develop and increasingly refine their understanding of the core values. They will also cultivate a deeper commitment to living and behaving in accordance with those values.
Effective character education requires an intentional, proactive, and comprehensive approach that promotes the core values in all phases of school life. Schools committed to character education look at themselves and see how virtually everything that goes on in school affects the values and character of students.
The school must be a caring community. The school itself must embody good character. It must progress toward becoming a smaller version of society. The school can do this by becoming a moral community that helps students form caring attachments to adults and to each other. These caring relationships will foster both the desire to learn and the desire to be a good person. All children and adolescents have a need to belong, and they are more likely to internalize the values and expectations of groups that meet this need.
To develop character, students need opportunities for moral action. Students learn best by doing. To develop good character, they need many and varied opportunities to apply values such as responsibility and fairness in everyday interactions and discussions. By working with real-life challenges, students develop a practical understanding of the requirements of fairness, cooperation, and respect. Activities such as working in cooperative learning groups, reaching consensus in a meeting, carrying out service learning projects, reducing fights and friction between individuals, and intervening with others give students the opportunity to develop and practice these moral skills and behavioral habits that make up the action side of character.
Effective character education includes a meaningful and challenging academic curriculum that respects all learners and helps them succeed. Character education and academic learning must not be perceived as separate entities; rather they must be understood as two parts of a whole. In a caring classroom and school where students feel liked and respected by their teachers and fellow students, students are more likely to work hard and achieve. Likewise, when students are enabled to succeed at the work of school, they are more likely to feel valued and cared about as persons. A character education school makes effective use of active teaching and learning methods such as cooperative learning, problem-solving approaches, and experience-based projects. One of the most sincere ways to respect children is to respect the way they learn. Academic achievement is traced in the following way: six percent to teaching techniques and lesson presentations; sixteen percent to factors over which the school has no control; and seventy-eight percent to the quality of human interaction in the school.2
Character education should strive to develop students’ intrinsic motivation. As students develop good character, they develop a stronger inner commitment to doing what their moral judgment tells them is right. Schools, especially in their approach to discipline, should strive to develop this intrinsic commitment to core values. They should minimize their reliance on extrinsic rewards and punishments that distract students’ attention from the real reasons to behave responsibly: the rights and needs of self and others. Responses to rule breaking should give students opportunities for restitution and foster the students’ understanding of the rules and willingness to abide by them in the future. Within the academic curriculum, intrinsic motivation should be fostered in every way possible. This can be done by helping students experience the challenge and interest of subject matter, the desire to work collaboratively with other students, and the fulfillment of making a positive difference in another person’s life or in their school or community.
The school staff must become a learning and moral community in which all share responsibility for character education and attempt to adhere to the same core values that guide the education of students. ALL school staff—teachers, assistants, administrators, secretaries, coaches, cafeteria workers, bus drivers—should be involved in learning about, discussing, and taking ownership of the character education effort. All of these adults must model the core values in their own behavior and take advantage of the opportunities they have to influence the character of the students with whom they come into contact. The same values and norms that govern the life of students must govern the lives of the adult members of the school community. If students are to be treated as constructive learners, then so must the adults. They must have extended staff development and many opportunities to observe and practice ways of integrating character education practices into their work with students.
Character education requires moral leadership from both staff and students. For character education to meet the criteria given to this point, there must be leaders (administration, lead teacher) who champion the effort and focus on long-range planning and program implementation. Students should also take roles of moral leadership through student government, peer conflict mediation programs, cross-age tutoring, etc.
The school must recruit parents and community members as full partners in the character-building effort. A school’s character education mission statement should state explicitly that parents are the first and most important moral educators of their children. The school should make extra efforts to communicate with parents about the school’s goals and activities regarding character development, and how families can help. To build trust between home and school, parents should be represented on various committees, and should actively reach out to those disconnected parents to give them an opportunity to give input into the school’s core ethical values.
Evaluation of character education should assess the character of the school, the school staff’s functioning as character educators, and the extent to which students manifest good character. Effective character education must include an effort to assess progress. Development of surveys, to be given at the beginning of the character education initiative, and then again at the end, is just one way to evaluate the character education effectiveness within the academic environment.
Character education activities
There is no limit to the types of activities a teacher can use in the classroom to get students thinking about character education. For example, see these two activities.
Activity one
Scenario: You are leaving Greece after a two-week vacation. You are at the airport. You are carrying a medium-sized bag that contains your passport, airline ticket, and many valuable souvenirs. Your other luggage has been checked. Suddenly, a group of five terrorists fire into the crowd, hitting several people. You hide behind a ticket counter and are not hurt. Quickly, security guards capture the terrorists and disarm them. The airport is immediately closed. People are screaming and hysterical. In the confusion, you lose your bag. Near you, a small, unattended child is crying and bleeding from a wound. What should you do next?
Look at the following options. Decide which course of action to take. Rank each option. The options should be ranked from 1 to 6 with 1 being the highest priority.
Option 1: Leave your bag and make arrangements to go back to your hotel immediately. (You’ll be out of danger but what about your bag?)
Option 2: Start an immediate search for your bag. (You may find it. Will it be safe? What about the injured people?)
Option 3: Stay put. Don’t do anything. (What about your safety, your bag, the injured child?)
Option 4: Go to the aid of the injured child. (Can you really help the child? Is it safe to come out?)
Option 5: Go to the ticket desk and ask for help. (Would the airlines even consider your problem? Remember you have no passport.)
Option 6: Find a telephone and call home immediately. (How easy would this be and how much time would it take?)
After students rank their options, as a class or in small groups, discuss the varying concerns and priorities raised by the scenario. Use the questions in parenthesis as a guide.
Activity two
Use one of these or a similar phrase as an opener to your class each day. These short conversations can be held as a class or students can be divided into small, regular groups. Norms or rules should be established to ensure an atmosphere that is free of “risk” and where students are not pressured to make up an answer. Students may also suggest their own phrases. Spend no more than fifteen minutes on this activity.
- Tell the group one thing you feel good about today.
- Choose three words ending in “ing” that describe you as a person.
- Tell the group one thing you did that is an example of our class agreement.
- Tell us one thing you are proud of.
- In groups I feel most comfortable when the leader…
- I am happiest when…
- To me, belonging is…
- I like to be just a follower when…
- When I am alone I usually…
- In a group I usually get most involved when… 3
Integrating character education across the curriculum
Character education can also be integrated in almost every subject. Following are character education ideas for a variety of curriculum areas.
Visual arts
Ask students to bring in cartoons or comic strips where characters are behaving in responsible or irresponsible ways. Discuss in small groups or as a whole class. Students can draw their own cartoons demonstrating one of the school’s core values.
Social studies
Prepare index cards with a specific situation that calls for immediate action by the leader of a country being studied. Distribute cards to each student who describes briefly what he/she determines to be the most responsible action. Divide into small groups for discussion of each response. The group must come to consensus as to the most responsible course of action and explain why this choice was selected over other alternatives.
English language arts
- Have each student pick another student’s name out of a hat and write a positive adjective about the person they picked (or have each student write a positive adjective about every student in their class). Pass the notes to the children they describe and have them make a collage of the answers.
- Choose a book at the library or a story in the reading book that describes someone doing something nice for someone else. Read the story aloud in the classroom. Students should explore their feelings about how it feels to do something nice for another and share personal experiences of others doing nice things for them. This can be done in a class discussion format or through a free-writing exercise.
- Have the students think about a time when they hurt someone’s feelings and then rewrite the situation with a different outcome.
- Ask the students to think of all the people who have done something nice for them. Have students write letters of appreciation to two of those people and explain how the kind action/person made a difference in their life—or even day.
- Conduct a newspaper character trait search. Choose a trait (such as respect, kindness, or integrity) and have the students look through the newspaper for stories that reflect that particular quality. Students each choose a favorite story, summarize for the rest of the class, and explain how it demonstrates the characteristic.
Math
- Make a quilt out of paper or fabric as part of a unit on measurement with each patch containing a drawing of a character trait. After it is completed the class could donate the quilt to a local charity or display in the classroom.
- Conduct a study to see how much aluminum, paper, and other recyclable materials are currently being thrown away in school or at home. Calculate how much space they would take up in a landfill.
- Have your students tutor younger students in math.
Science
- Learn how pollution and trash affect the environment, including animals and plants. Discuss how applying different character traits toward our environment could help humans, animals, and plants.
- Plant a tree or small flower garden on the school grounds and discuss each type of plant or flower and how best to care for them.
- Adopt a nearby park and learn about the ecosystems within that park while keeping it clean and beautiful at the same time.
- Learn how to make homes more energy efficient and share the information with local residents. Discuss how energy efficiency helps the environment and, in turn, humans and animals.
Social studies
- Identify community helpers such as crossing guards, firefighters, and police officers. Visit the places where they work and learn about their jobs. Discuss how their jobs help the community.
- Meet with senior citizens and record their memories of what the community was like when they were growing up. Compare their likes and dislikes with those of young people today. Compare prices from then and now.
- Choose a problem (using consensus) in the community, such as a need for a crosswalk at a certain intersection or the lack of a bookmobile stop at an assisted living center. Contact local officials with ideas for solving the problem and explore how to initiate the change. Learn about the political process by attending city council meetings, visiting local officials, and writing letters.
- When studying people in history have the students illustrate how they showed character traits.
- Create a crossword puzzle with the names of kind people students learn about in history. When puzzle is complete, discuss how each historical figure was kind.
Character education wall
Using a character education wall is an effective way to communicate particular character traits. The book 180 Days of Character by Donna Forrest, Ed.S. is an excellent resource to place daily character trait sayings on the wall for student and staff perusal. If your school system has a particular trait that is focused on each month, the “days” can be adjusted to fit those traits. The book is divided up into different sections (Character, Choices, Responsibility, Kindness, Manners, Honesty/Integrity, Trust, Respect, Courage, Equality, Sharing/Cooperation, and Goal Setting). Laminate each day’s saying for use the next year. Place the definition of the trait up on the wall so that all may understand what it actually means. Get students involved in writing prompts that go along with the trait, and post on the wall. As items appear in the newspaper, post them on the wall, and always be on the lookout for proverbs that can be used.
Professional development
The school’s character education initiative must come up regularly in teacher meetings, workshops, and professional development. Use this PowerPoint, along with the information and ideas in this article, to help implement and maintain a successful character education program.
